For the past few days (well, a bit longer than that, but that's neither here nor there), I've been receiving e-mails from the folks at GenCon to let me know the sequence of events leading up to the opening of registration and the like for GenCon 2018.

It was with a somewhat heavy heart that I decided, right when the first e-mails started rolling in, that I'm not going to GenCon 2018 this year. Part of this has to do with what happened to me at GenCon in 2017 (which I'm not going into here) as I came face-to-face with the state of my diabetes and my age. I'm not a spring chicken any more, again neither here nor there. The other part is the money aspects of the convention. The airfare and hotel costs keep going up, and I need to put some money into my home this year. That said, I will miss the friends and game designers I have at GenCon, both old and new, but there are just various factors that will keep me from going to the convention this year.

I feel like a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders, to be honest, every time I've received one of the e-mails. This is because my thought when I see one is that I don't have to stress out over booking airfares, hotel accommodations, and the like and the fact that I'm saving money by not going this year.

But yes, I will miss it. (Hopefully I'll be able to get a friend of mine to pick up some stuff for me at the convention.)